Beyond Ghostbusters: Five films that could do with a gender reversal remake

Rare is the creature who welcomes the remake, as anyone who has ever seen that Johnny Depp atrocity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, will attest. So when director Paul Feig confirmed that there would be an all-female cast for the new Ghostbusters, I felt like I'd been slimed (sorry). But when I learned that said females would have legit comedy chops, (WHAT IS UP, LESLIE JONES!) I felt cautiously optimistic. Then openly optimistic. Then ecstatic with joy!

In my dopamine-enhanced daze I began to brainstorm other movies that could be remade and recast with opposing genders. I was all set to file it too when something happened on the twitters - other people had the same, (frankly incredible) idea! #remakewithwomen officially became a thing so without further ado, herewith my own top five.

1. When Harry Met Sally

He's a super-cute, uptight but ultimately cheerful guy with food issues. She's a normal-looking, cynical gal who is obsessed with death and kinda thinks she knows it all - until! THEY FALL IN LOVE!

I'm going with James Marsden, (because he looks identical to Meg Ryan) and Lena Dunham. I'm sure nobody would have a problem with it because Dunham already did something similar on her TV show and that went great and was not greeted with any controversy or hideous sexist chatter at all. 

Dunham can spend the entirety of the movie gently chiding Marsden for his romantic choices, his food habits, his speech patterns; while Marsden can just sigh, roll his eyes, sometimes cry in a cute way and keep ordering things on the side like the little fusspot we know so many men are prone to be! But then, right, he will FLIP OUR WORLD UPSIDE DOWN when fakes an orgasm in public! Oh! BURN!

2. Pretty Woman

Don't worry about the name, it's just a working title. So, I'm thinking of break-out star Ella Coltrane, the now 20 year-old young man from the award-winning movie Boyhood, for the role of sex worker. After all, Julia Roberts was 21 when she made it. Richard Gere was 40. 

Ok, so! The opening scene can feature this young man stepping into leather chaps, preparing for a night's work. That way, millions of fathers and sons will understand the real subtext  when they see it together - this is a modern retelling of Cinderella!

Naomi Watts can play the suave business lady who keeps him all safe and cosy in a hotel penthouse, while teaching him the meaning of refinement, like how to plop strawberries in champagne and eat fancy French meals. I know Watts already seems incredibly romantic and not at all controlling and weird but wait because Watts is also super serious - it's left to Coltrane to get that smile back on her dial!

So she frowns a lot while admonishing Coltrane like his mother would before sleeping with him every night. As if that's not sexy enough, she comes to collect him in the end in a stretch limo!

3. Iron Woman

Ok, so Ironwoman's best friend is a robot. Her personal assistant is a hetero guy  - a dude used to having leading man status. Let's go with Ryan Gosling.

So Gosling is the perfect secretary because he fixes all of her faux pas with an absolute minimum of fuss. He even helps with her one-night stands, (which, by the way, everyone thinks is awesome and nobody, not even right wing religious groups call out like they do with GIRLS). But the really cool thing is that instead of feeling resentful that he has to be employee, friend and care-giver to Cameron, with never a day off, he's actually in love with her. Yeah!

4. Beaches

They go through all the great highs and lows, intimacies, jealousies, (both professional and personal) of any male friendship. Then they talk about it. Then they both fall for the same woman, but she picks Matt. Or Ben - it's not important.

What is important is that one of them sings Wind Beneath My Wings and nobody is at all unsettled by such a deep and abiding love that's not camp and not some sanitised love story between two dudes, (Philadelphia) and not borne out of the trauma of war. It's just an epic male (hetero normative) friendship. And it's magnificent.

5. EVERY WOODY ALLEN MOVIE EVER

Well, maybe not every one of them. Just the ones where the women - who will now be played by men - are divided into two groups: either they're unbearable, nagging husbands whom nobody can stand or fun-loving, naive sex workers.

If the young men aren't sex workers, they can just be dumb. Or super sexy and manipulative. Or, just big, horrible bastards who've made a mess of their lives.

And the male actors will keep lining up to play these two-dimensional versions of themselves opposite older, less attractive women because they know it's a first class ticket to Oscar. Because the Oscar voters are made up of mostly old women.

And when one guy wins Best Actor for playing the most unimaginative, cliche, caricature of a man, he can stand up and say, 'Audiences want to see men in film. The world is round, people.' And everyone will think that's a terribly profound thing to say, like, for a man, who just starred in a really awful movie.